Uma Prajapati – Finding Meaning & Creativity in Auroville
Uma Prajapati – Finding Meaning and Creativity in Auroville.pdf
In 1996, I arrived in Auroville for a two-week project at Auromode under Prema’s guidance. It was a great experience as a professional to be able to work in such a beautiful setting – Auroville . Though I didn’t know what Auroville truly was – I felt at home. Those two weeks never ended, now almost three decades later!
Back then, I was a trained fashion designer, a graduate of the National Institute of Fashion Technology (NIFT), Delhi. I had the technical skills of fabric, form, and flow – but I had no idea that fashion would become my yoga.
I came to Auroville as a young adult. I hadn’t figured out my finances, had no saved money or any external support. And yet I found myself sitting under a tree in the forest, deeply at peace.
One can be born in one place, grow up in another, and yet – home can be somewhere else entirely.
Auroville was that home, I had discovered.
And Auromode was the perfect space to apply everything I had learned at NIFT to the soul of Auroville. …
Fashion – which became the first doorway to my yoga!
Upasana – Ownership Without Ownership
Later, I founded Upasana as a design studio, and I began to run a unit of Auroville …
Discovering a new chapter: business as yoga.
In Auroville, we learn to work without ownership, to build without possession.
It’s a paradox: to be attached to money enough to attract it and detached enough to not be owned by it.
I began walking that narrow, sacred pathway. It required surrender – a transforming journey began to unfold.
And I found myself designing not just garments – but systems, structures, and projects.
No legal claims. No personal stakes.
Only karma yoga. Only offering.
Over time, I noticed: I was not sticky about money. I could receive it freely – and release it just as freely.
Running Upasana was not just business …
It was a space to test my courage, purify my ego, and deepen my surrender.
Bringing Consciousness Into Fashion
Fashion is entangled with vanity – skin-deep illusions of beauty. But in Auroville, I encountered another meaning of beauty:
“Beauty is the way the Divine manifests in the physical.”
Learning this in Auroville changed everything for me.
I began to dream of a different fashion—one rooted in awareness, compassion, and integrity. I cried for fashion to become conscious, long before I knew how far that prayer would reach.
Fifteen years later, I stood witness as “conscious fashion” became a global trend.
What was once a silent aspiration, held alone under a tree, had become a collective chant.
I worked with cotton farmers in Tamil Nadu. I sat with women in villages across India.
I designed social projects where textiles became a medium of empowerment.
Tsunamika
Tsunamika was one such offering – born in the aftermath of the devastating tsunami.
A tiny doll, carried in the hands of women who had lost everything, became a symbol of resilience and healing.
That little doll travelled across the world. A tiny symbol. A vast spirit.
The feminine voice- woven in thread.
Today, Tsunamika is part of the UN Clean Ocean Mission.
Work as Worship: Integral Yoga in Matter
Work and sadhana were never separate for me.
But it took years for me to recognize that truth.
I used to believe that being a yogi meant renouncing the world.
But in Auroville, I learned that work itself is the yoga.
At a spirituality and business conference once, I heard the words:
“The CEO of the future will be a yogi.”
That line struck me. It felt like a personal prophecy.
A permission to be both a leader and a seeker.
Beauty, creativity, and clarity became sacred currencies.
Upasana became my laboratory, canvas, temple.
India’s Role in Conscious Fashion
I’ve always felt: if fashion is to be conscious …
It must be born in a land that understands consciousness.
Which land, if not India?
India has always woven the sacred into the everyday.
Our textiles are stories.
Our craft is ritual.
Our artisans don’t just make products—they transmit spirit.
India must lead the world in conscious fashion—not with noise, but with depth.
Not with branding, but with being …
And so I began to work—quietly.
And that’s what Upasana became:
A vessel for Shakti.
The Feminine, the Mother, the Formless
My journey has always been guided by the presence of The Mother.
At first, I didn’t know it.
When I worked with women in villages, I thought I was helping them.
But now I see – I was serving the Mother in all her forms.
When I designed clothing, I thought I was making fashion.
But I was adorning the Mother in all the beautiful women who passed through my life.
She revealed herself to me again and again – sometimes as grace, sometimes as challenge.
I began to see her everywhere – in cotton fields, in stitches, in journeys …
In breakdowns and breakthroughs.
Eventually, she even brought me into Auroville’s Town Hall …
Where administration became another form of sacred service.
A New Chapter of Service at Town Hall
After 25 years of being a boss, creating social projects, holding the conscious clothing brand Upasana and birthing the iconic project Tsunamika – I now find myself ready for a new chapter of service.
Each morning, I walk into Town Hall. The shift is not only external – it is internal.
From doing what I love, to doing what is needed.
After three decades in Auroville, I am letting go of identification with only the work I choose, and stepping into collective tasks that call for presence and responsibility.
In the Land Service, I now serve as an assistant to my colleagues, under the guidance of FAMC. I was entrusted with the handling of land encroachments – 27 cases requiring care. Some difficult, some smooth, many still in progress. We are moving full on.
In parallel, I took on youth housing under Housing Service, led by Banu. What began as a small responsibility has become an unfolding journey – Campus Management. Cleaning, maintaining, and nurturing our shared living spaces. From one site, we now manage six.
I don’t know many things – and I’m okay with it.
I only ask: How can I serve?
A Joyful Workaholic at the Feet of the Mother
I am a joyful workaholic at the feet of the Divine Mother.
Her presence is the only wealth I truly carry.
Uma Prajapati, Auroville, August 2025
